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You might think Peter Watson, the new chair of the National Energy Board, has more pressing priorities than a five-month road trip to listen to Canadians, meet local mayors, municipal engineers and emergency responders, sit down with First Nations leaders and answer questions on everything from pipeline safety to climate change.

You’d be wrong, he says. “We want people to know we’re on the job. We want them to challenge us. People need to trust the NEB (National Energy Board) and believe in its ability to enforce the rules and regulations that are in place to protect Canadians and the environment.”

Watson, a career public servant who served as both deputy minister of the environment and deputy minister of energy in Alberta, was appointed chair and CEO of Canada’s energy regulator last August. He spent his first four months on the job evaluating every aspect of the Calgary-based public agency. He found its staff of 450 engineers, inspectors, financial, legal and environmental specialists and compliance officers to be highly professional. But the organization was too Calgary-centric. Its relationships with the communities affected by proposed and existing pipelines were weak.

What needed work most was public profile. Canadians didn’t understand what it did. Some assumed it got its marching orders from the federal Conservatives. Many thought it was secretive. More than a few blamed it for silencing protestors and rubber-stamping pipeline applications.

In January, Watson and three senior NEB executives hit the road.

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Their first stop was Halifax. During the Atlantic leg of the tour, they battled blizzards, closed highways and cancelled flights (they had to scrap five meetings). They crossed into Quebec just in time for the coldest February on record. By the time they reached Ontario in March, the weather had moderated, but controversy was heating up over TransCanada’s bid to build a $12-billion pipeline to carry western crude to eastern refineries. This week alone, two new reports — from the Pembina Institute and the Mowat Centre — raised questions about the megaproject. The first warned Energy East would drive up carbon emissions. The second said the costs could outweigh the benefits.

Watson anticipates 5,000 intervenors will participate in the NEB’s hearings for the Energy East project. That would be a record. When the Conservatives took power in 2006, pipeline hearings typically attracted fewer than a dozen intervenors. By the time the NEB wrapped up its four-year hearing on the Northern Gateway pipeline in 2013, a total of 1,450 participants had testified. Its current hearing into the Kinder Morgan pipeline project attracted 2,000 applications.

“The energy debate in Canada provokes strong and often polarized opinions and pipelines are becoming the focal point of the discussion,” Watson said. “There has never been a better time to tell our story and listen to Canadians and community leaders.”

This week, he spent an hour with the Toronto Star’s editorial board. His lines were well-rehearsed but his willingness to answer questions — no matter how pointed or politically sensitive — was unusual for a public official.

It is true, he acknowledged, that the NEB has rejected very few applications. What it has done, however, is require changes in construction and/or operation of a pipeline before it will give a project the green light. It regularly issues compliance orders (300 a year) to companies whose pipelines fail to meet its standards.

What is not true, he insisted, is that the NEB is in the pocket of government. “Our interaction with the minister of natural resources (Greg Rickford, who appointed him) is essentially nil. In my eight months here, I haven’t witnessed anything inappropriate.”

It is true that Ottawa imposed a 15-month time limit on public hearings and tightened the requirements to testify in its omnibus 2012 budget bill.

But it’s not true that new regulations restrict the right of Canadians to oppose pipeline projects. They give the board a tool to filter out witnesses who are there to grandstand or talk about issues over which it has no jurisdiction. Watson does not believe every pipeline proposal should be a referendum on the extraction and use of fossil fuels. His agency’s responsibility is to ensure that no pipeline is built without a rigorous scientific and environmental review and a comprehensive sampling of public opinion.

The new chair has made a few changes already. This month the NEB opened regional offices in Montreal and Vancouver. It is negotiating an end to confidentiality agreements between pipeline companies and municipalities that leave residents in the dark.

None of Watson’s eight predecessors embarked on an outreach mission like his. Then again, none of them headed the agency at a time when pipelines were front-page news; climate change was a top-of-mind issue; the clash between energy and the environment was so sharply etched or the NEB faced so many conflicting demands.

Watson calls it regulating “in the eye of the storm.” His objective is to remain calm while controversy swirls around the board, make its operations as transparent as possible and meet Canadians on their own turf. It’s a refreshing approach to national decision-making.

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